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Stewed French Beans

A dish of French beans cooked with water, salt, egg yolks, cream, butter, vinegar, and optional gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring water with salt to a boil and cook the beans until just tender.

  2. Drain the beans in a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, whisk the egg yolks and cream together.

  2. Add butter to the saucepan and heat over low flame.

  3. Once hot, add the beans and vinegar, and simmer until tender, stirring to prevent curdling.

  4. Replace egg and cream with gravy.

  5. Use half the butter.

  6. Add flour to thicken after adding the beans.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the beans and vinegar simmer in the egg mixture. Egg yolks curdle when they get too hot or heat unevenly. Keeping the heat low and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly instead of scrambling it.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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